Where Did I Go Wrong?
by mars2192
Summary: Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness.'


**Disclamer: Okay. Okay, let's say I bought a really great pair of shoes do you know what I'd hear with every step I took? 'Not-mine. Not-mine. Not-mine.' And even if I was happy, okay, and, and skipping- 'Not-not-mine, not-not-mine, not-not-mine, not-not-mine' (Sorry, my inner Friends fan is creeping out. You get the point?)**

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**Where Did I Go Wrong?**

_-Where did I go wrong?_

_I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness-_

I don't get along with my sisters. Joyce blames me for her binge eating and because my mum made her wear ankle weights to vacuum the living room. Janet is too much a free spirit and only gets in contact when she needs a place to crash while the health department fumigate her van. I'm not really close to my mother. Too many show tunes and insults. I've never really had a lot of girlfriends either but the few I've had I've considered sisters. There's Ellen, who I see as my twin purely because we're the same age. But she's married to Rob and she's got her three young children to look after. Wait… four. No, three. Or is it five? Anyway, she's got lots of children to look after so she's not around much. There's also Julie. She's like the half sister who you didn't know about until you were like eight. She's the daughter your dad had from another marriage. But since she lives in my cheating bastard of an ex-husband's building it could be difficult to go over there without bumping into the one person I never wanted to see again. There was Karen. I say 'was' because she's not around anymore. This is me trying to figure out why.

I first met Karen when she applied for the job to be my assistant at my interior design firm. I was a little puzzled when she walked in. I wasn't quite sure what to make of her. I could tell she was rich, but I wasn't quite sure how rich. She was wearing a smart suit, but it wasn't one of those high-end designer suits. She was quite shy and quiet and she seemed really nervous at the start of the interview, using as short answers as she could. As the interview progressed she gradually became chattier and more relaxed and I started to like her. She didn't have much design experience but she had some great ideas and she seemed like a fun person to have round the office. By the end of the interview we weren't even chatting about design. She started telling me about her family. Turned out she had gotten married a few months before and had two stepchildren. I'll never forget how much her face lit up when she spoke of her husband Stanley Walker. I could tell by the end of the interview that Karen really wanted the job. I didn't know why and I didn't want to ask. Interview over, she shook my hand then left the office. It didn't take me long to decide who to hire after I interviewed all of the applicants. I called Karen to tell her that she got that job and she couldn't have been more thrilled. She started a week later.

It wasn't long after Karen started working with me that her husband Stan hit the jackpot. I'm not sure of the circumstances surrounding Stan's sudden success but he started raking it in. The Walkers moved into a penthouse on Park Avenue and Karen started wearing high-end suits. I'm talking twenty feet high-end suits. Okay, bad joke. I couldn't help notice that Karen changed after she came into the big bucks. She became subdued. She seemed a little depressed. When I first noticed the change in her demeanour, we didn't know each other that well so I didn't feel like it was my place to ask questions. In fact, it was a couple of months before I broached the subject. Karen then told me that she had been a small town girl up until she was seven when her father died. Before her father died, she and her parents lived in a nice house and enjoyed the rural community lifestyle. Once her father died, her mother Lois couldn't afford to keep the house. It was sold and Lois started travelling around the country pulling scams on people, dragging Karen with her and even using her as a prop. At age sixteen, Karen had a huge row with her mother (she never told me what it was about) and left 'home' telling her mother she never wanted to see her again. Karen told me that she had never been as happy as she had been when she was a little girl. That all changed when she met Stan, she told me. She started to feel loved, special again. When she and Stan started living together along with Stan's two children in their suburban home she started to feel the happiness of family again. They were happy living their humble life together. I remember Karen trying to fight back tears when she started talking about how Stan changed as soon he started making mega-bucks. It was as if the money went straight to his head. Before Karen knew it, they were leaving their humble home in the suburbs to go to a penthouse in the middle of the city. Stan had bought the penthouse without talking it through with his wife first. Karen decided to go against her better judgement and say nothing about the move and hope that everything would still be the same as it was in suburbs. Karen sobbed when she said it wasn't. She was being made to fraternise with her socialite neighbours and she felt uncomfortable in their clique. I told her to say something to Stan about it but she told me that she'd tried that many times before, but Stan would tell her to stop being silly then give her a huge wad of cash to shut her up. Karen went on to say that Stan was spending all the time with the business and she hardly ever saw him. She said she felt like she was losing her husband after only a few months. Karen left the office later that evening with a little bit more optimism than she had when she arrived in the morning. I told her that it would probably blow over soon and everything would return to normal. I only wish I'd been right.

About a year and a half after Karen started working for me, I started to have my suspicions about the amount she drank. To begin with, she would come into the office slightly smelling of alcohol. At first I didn't think about it – I just assumed she'd been out for drinks the night before. I started to grow a little worried when the smell of alcohol started to intensify and become more frequent. During the course of a few months she started being hung over at the office, then she started showing up late and then on occasions she wouldn't show up at all. Will kept telling me I should fire her. I sort of agreed, but at the time my business wasn't doing too good and Karen's social contacts (the people she'd met thanks to the socialite faction she hated so much) were keeping my business afloat so I had to weigh up the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was the lesser of two evils not fire Karen and put up with her drinking and her coming in late. Will scoffed when I said I wasn't going to fire her and told me to at least question her over the drinking but I told him it wasn't the boss' business what employees did outside of the workplace. Then he said he meant as her friend, not her boss. Even so, I didn't feel comfortable. Yes, Karen and I were friends but I didn't feel as though we were good enough friends that I could approach her about something as big as that. Not at that time. The next day, however, the story was different. I had been away to the fabric store, leaving Karen alone to answer the phones. When I returned Karen was in the process of downing a bottle of gin at her desk. I spent the next thirty seconds contemplating whether to go into friend mode or boss mode. Thirty seconds doesn't sound like a lot but in that situation it feels like forever. Then I decided that going into what Will had called boss mode was really the same as friend mode, just with a different title. Or it would have been if she'd told me why she was drinking so excessively. She agreed to stop drinking in the office, but she didn't agree to stop drinking. I told her about all the health risks, but her argument to that was it numbed the pain so she didn't care. I asked her what pain she was trying to numb. She didn't tell me. The conversation ended there and the subject was never discussed again. Maybe I should have brought the subject up again.

It was nearly six o'clock in the evening on that seemingly normal day. I was in the office with the television on. I had decided stay in the office a little later than normal to work on the designs for a Westchester house. It was just me in the office. I had been on another gruelling trip to the fabric store and when I returned Karen wasn't there. I just assumed that there were no phone calls coming in so Karen had just gone home. As I continued my designs I occurred to me that the office door had been unlocked when I returned. I brushed the thought of thinking it was nothing. She probably just forgot. (I do that a lot. I walk out the door without even a second's thought about locking the door.) About ten minutes later I was in the swatches room, listening to the six o'clock news while I tried to find what I was looking for._ 'Businessman Stanley Walker was arrested this afternoon on suspicion of tax evasion,' _I heard the news reporter say. It took me a couple seconds to register what had been said and go over to watch the television intently. At the end of that segment I headed straight to Karen's house. When I got there she wasn't as distressed as I had expected. She seemed a little confused, but now that I think about it she didn't seem that shocked. She was chatting away like nothing was happening. Like her husband wasn't going to jail. The 'I'm alright' impression she was trying to create worked really well. It fooled me. It fooled me big style. I really thought she was fine. She was a little shaken up, but she seemed to be coping. I stayed there overnight, and went with Karen to the prison the next morning. She was upset and angry, but she didn't seem distraught. I went back home with her and stayed over that night. The next day I left. I had to go back to work, but I told Karen she could take a few days off if she wanted to. In the couple of hours before I went home I asked her over and over again whether she was okay. Every time she said she was fine, so I went home. Maybe I shouldn't have been so damn gullible.

While Stan was in prison, Karen almost had an affair, almost being the operative word. She met some rich guy in a bar who thought she was a hooker whilst using the alias Anastasia Beaverhausen. She felt so guilty about it. She told us she didn't sleep with him- they only made out- and Stan had given her permission to go out with other men while he was in the big house but nevertheless she still felt as if she was betraying her marriage vows. She broke the affair off and waited for Stan to get out of jail. As it happened, she didn't have to wait too long. Stan was secretly released from prison a couple of weeks after that. He cut some sort of deal with the feds that none of us knew about. Stan's lawyer, who just happened to be Will, didn't knew he was getting released that day. I found out Stan had been released thanks to that double page message saying _'Welcome back Stan. Love your friends at Pizza Hut.' _Goodness only knows how Karen found out – I never asked. All I know is in the couple of weeks the guilt about Lionel Banks (that's the rich guy who thought she was a hooker in the bar) was eating away at her. Eventually Karen decided to tell Stan that she practically cheated on him. However when she went to tell Stan, Karen got an even bigger surprise. I was sitting in the office (again) when I got a shocking phone call from Will. _Karen and Stan are getting a divorce,_ he said. I automatically assumed that Stan had asked for the divorce. I got the shock when Will told me that Stan was cheating on Karen with some bimbo who worked in the prison cafeteria. Will then asked me if I would go and see how Karen was once I finished work but I had already made plans to go out with Leo. Oh right, Leo. I met him in the park when I ran into a street lamp and hit my head. Ouch. Anyway, the point is I blew Karen off for a date when her marriage hit the rocks. I did promise to visit her wherever she was staying the next day but there was a client who decided to hate my design plans at the last minute and wanted me to design everything there, so I had to cancel that day. And something else came up the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day until it was weeks later and the situation calmed down. I never got to know how Karen was really coping. Maybe I should have put my friend before the guy I was seeing.

Just a couple of months after Karen and Stan started divorce proceedings I got married to Leo. We were in Central Park and there was this mass wedding thing (AKA stupid stunt for sweeps) and Leo proposed with a fake daisy ring. To be honest, the service was sucky. And not legit as we found out during the wedding reception that later became the engagement party. Anyway, Leo and I had a real wedding a few weeks later and it was beautiful. In the months that followed I was so wrapped up in my marriage that I didn't spend much time with any of my friends. Maybe I should have spent more time with my friends, especially the ones who may have needed a shoulder to cry on.

I'll never forget the day Karen's husband died. (Well, when I say husband I mean 'husband Stan whom Karen was in the middle of divorcing.') Jack and I were in my apartment attempting to cook dinner. Leo was due home from work within the next few minutes and Will and Karen were also due to arrive from the divorce court soon. Everything seemed normal that day except for me nearly setting my home on fire. (Oops.) Will and Karen entered bickering. (Yep, that was normal too.) Will was representing Stan and Karen was pissed. During all the bickering and constant insults to mine and Jack's cooking skills (those hurt!) Karen's maid Rosario came in looking a little teary eyed. I assumed that Karen had let Rosario call her kids. Rosario kept trying to butt in as Karen was shouting something about never wanting to speak to that adulterous bastard again. Then Rosario blurted out that Stan had died and the whole room froze. Karen had her back to me so I couldn't see her instant reaction but something was telling me that it was another bout of 'shock-freezing' as I like to call it. A stunned silence followed. Leo managed to spectacularly beat that silence to a pulp by entering with his loud announcement about the beer he had picked up. I swear I can only think of one time where I've wanted to hurt him more. Actually, twice I've wanted to hurt him more. You see, during the funeral (it was held a few days later) his cell phone rang in the middle of a moment of silence. It started playing The friggin' William Tell Overture! Anyway, it was Doctors Without Borders calling. They wanted Leo to help set up a clinic in Guatemala. At the time he didn't know how long he was going to be away for. I couldn't believe it. I spent the rest of the time during the funeral bickering with Leo. That was until he asked me to down there with him. I was oddly excited to be going to a third world country. But _that_ was until I found out that Karen was inviting everyone down to the Caribbean on her yacht to scatter Stan's ashes and then I, of course, wanted to go down there. Although, when I found out whom Leo was going to Guatemala with, it was a totally different story. The woman he was going down there with was smokin' hot. Even I would do her! Well… I spent all my time on Karen's yacht obsessing about Leo cheating on me with _her._ I even found a note she wrote Leo that basically said she wanted to do…um … _naughty_ things to him. I spent the whole time on the yacht panicking and not trusting my husband. Maybe if I'd trusted my husband more I would have been a better friend.

I never really regained my confidence in my marriage after that. I know he never did anything wrong, but still the possibility shook me up. I was devastated when Leo cheated on me. He was in Cambodia thanks to another Doctors Without Borders project and there was some sort of party involving alcohol and, long story short, he cheated on me. We were going to try to work past it, but I couldn't last one day. I asked for a divorce and moved back into Will's. During the next few months I was trying to sort my own life and I guess it would have seemed like everything was all 'me me me'. But, at the same time, I was trying to prove to myself that I could deal with things on my own. I refused help and advice from anybody. I felt like nobody could help me. I felt like there was nobody who understood what I was going through. Maybe I should've paid more attention in the past.

When you're dead, you're dead, right? Wrong in Karen's husband's case. He came back from the dead. That's right. Even now that doesn't make a lot of sense. The story that I know is Stan faked his death to escape a mob. Karen's reaction to this was completely different to this than it was to all of the other things. She was in complete denial for almost two months. She even started seeing this guy Malcolm who happened to be the guy who was protecting Stan while he was keeping an extremely minute profile. Karen did take Stan back but kept seeing Malcolm for a while. Malcolm eventually ended it because he had to 'go back to New Hampshire for eighteen months of jury duty.' (Bullshit if you ask me.) As far as I know, Stan never knew about Karen's relationship with Malcolm. Karen seemed to be happy to have her husband back. She seemed to be happy to have her old life back – the life she had when I first met her. Everything seemed to be settling down, and I stopped looking for her being down in the dumps. Maybe I should have known better.

Everything seemed to happen within a space of a few months. A seriously dramatic catastrophic few months. It started off with me meeting Leo on a plane to London (and consequently joining the mile high club). Then Will met this guy James who he appeared to have fallen in love with but his VISA ran out in a few days and he would have to move back to Canada. I offered to marry James so he could get his green card. The day after the fake wedding, the marriage was annulled. (James was a freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak.) The day after the wedding, I also found out I was pregnant. A few weeks later Karen and Stan were getting divorced again and this time it was for good. I was too busy trying to deal with a surprise pregnancy to pay attention to my friend who was getting divorced, this time for good. I was too busy panicking to see that my friend was devastated. To see that my friend's life was falling apart. Maybe I should have kept a level head.

I'll never forget that day. It started off such a happy day. I was finally passed my shock about being pregnant and had just been for my first scan. I was in my office daydreaming about baby clothes and tiny little shoes and imaging my baby giggling. I snapped out of my happy trance when my phone rang. I answered the phone in a singsong tone so when Will spoke in a rather disturbed, upset voice I wasn't surprised. I assumed I had disturbed him with my singing. But when he said _'Sit down, Grace. I've_ _some really awful news,'_ I was really worried. What Will told me shocked me. Scared me. Upset me. Filled me with guilt. I hung up the phone and started thinking about what I could have done to prevent what had happened. What I _should_ have done to prevent what happened.

I wonder if things would have been different if I continued to question Karen about her excessive drinking. If I kept bugging her, she may have told me what was causing her to drink so much and I could have done something to help her.

I wonder if things would have been different if I'd told my client the design for her house would be later than planned owing to 'unforeseen circumstances'. If I had done that, I would have been able to stay with Karen for a few days and I could have let her know that her friends were there for her and she wouldn't have felt so alone.

I wonder if things would have been different if I hadn't been such a slut.

I wonder if things would have been different if I hadn't been so insensitive by having a huge wedding. Seriously, what person in the middle of a messy divorce what to see such a cheesy reminder of what they're in the process of losing?

I wonder if things would have been different if I had had enough faith in my husband to be faithful. If I had I would have been a much better friend.

I wonder if things would have been different if I had let the one friend who had been through what I was going through help me. I wonder if Karen had felt how I was feeling when her husband cheated on her.

I wonder if things would have been different if I'd asked Karen how she was doing every once in a while instead of assuming she would tell me if she wasn't okay.

I wonder if things would have been different if I hadn't panicked so much about being pregnant. Loads of women get pregnant every day. What was the great need to panic really?

I wonder if things would have been different if I had done all of these things instinctively. I wonder if Karen would still be here if I'd done all of those things.

As I play with my daughter, I know was a lousy friend. As I tell Laila about her Aunt Karen, I know I have to live with the guilt. I know that one day she'll ask to meet her Aunt Karen and I know I'll take Laila to where her Aunt Karen is when she's old enough to understand.

I thought I understood guilt when I tried to explain said emotion to Karen many years ago. I didn't then. I do now. I feel really guilty, but at the same time something tells me not to, because I wasn't to know what was to happen. But would I have known if I'd been a good friend in the first place? Would I have known what drove Karen to what happened? What I do know is if could've seen into the future I would have done everything I possibly could to stop it.

_-And I would have stayed up with you all night had I known_

_How to save a life-_

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**A/N: The lyrics used are from 'How To Save A Life' by The Fray. Hope you enjoy! And special thanks to Pam who was a fabulous beta. :)**


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